tropes_fanonfandomcom-20200214-history
Financial Failure
Caitlin: "...credit cards have limits?" The Financial Failure is someone who doesn't spend their money wisely, often blowing their money on ridiculous items. Comes in three variants: *Regular- Where one is super greedy and doesn't care about anyone else, just him/her or sometimes his/her family if his/her family is greedy too. *Credit Card/Debt- Where one racks up debt via a credit card or other means. *Bankruptcy- Where one goes bankrupt due to a lot of debt. Paid It All Off is the inversion of the variant where one actually racks up debt. Antitrust Concern is the inversion of the regular variant, if it involves a company. From Rags to Bankruptcy is the variant where the bankruptcy leads the business to be worse off than it was pre-bankruptcy. For US companies that are in the business of distributing anime, the equivalent of this is Bionix Bankruptcy. If it involves taxes, this can lead to The Write-off, or Longer-than-Life Sentence at its logical extremes. Examples Regular *The Mankanshokus became this some time after Mako became a Two-Star, all because they were greedy. *The Snootie Poodles are one big family of Financial Failures. The reason? They buy too much toys. *Speaking of too much toys, Spencer of Too Many Toys, though he doesn't directly spend money on them. His relatives and friends do. This leads to one of the book's many unanswered questions. *It's a bad thing to be one in Deadman Wonderland, as if a death row inmate becomes one, chances are they'll be dead in less than three days. *Junko Enoshima from Danganronpa is the closest thing to a human Financial Failure in Hope's Peak. Granted, though, Monokuma could also be a Financial Failure, given that he hit Leon Kuwata with a thousand baseballs (the "Million Fungoes"/"The 1000 Blows" execution) and he covered Teruteru Hanamura with enough ingredients to make a human-sized Teruteru tonkatsu (the "Deep Fried Teruteru" execution). *Stan Marsh, as a result of becoming an addict to a freemium game in "Freemium Isn't Free". **Eric Cartman, as a result of making a crowdfunding company named "Washington Redskins". It got him a visit from the football team of the same name, and after a game between the Redskins and the Cowboys, Cartman decided that it was better to go back to school than changing the name of their company. *A real-life example is conman Bernie Madoff, better known for creating the largest Ponzi Scheme in United States history. His actions earned him a 150-year jail sentence after it was exposed. *Pawtucket Patriot isn't one normally, but they got sued for infringing upon Duff in The Simpsons Guy. *Nanamine. He has online assistants do all the work and takes all the credit for it, and therefore all of the profit from it that doesn't go directly to Shounen Jump. Or, at least, he used to: Nakai managed to ruin Nanamine's second manga when he found out about the manga's dropping rank and talked to the online assistants about it. The result was not pretty. And then one manga idea later, he's permanently banned from Shounen Jump (in the manga only). *How It's Made: The narrator (in any of the three (Canadian/US/UK) English dubs) does not talk about how much something costs to make, nor what the prices are when they are ready to be sold. Unlike other examples, this is justifiable, considering prices can change at any time and they're only looking at how stuff is made (with a little history of the product), not economic numbers. *R.J. Fletcher of UHF wanted channel 62 for the sole purpose of shutting it down. Of course, Weird Al didn't like when a dislike for a character is built up and he/she gets away scot-free, so he wrote in that not only did Fletcher fail at buying up channel 62 at all, he got his license revoked. *NHK requires ¥15,490 (for over-the-air broadcasts) or ¥25,520 (for satellite TV) as its TV license fee. The problem was, the NHK had no fines or other sanctions for being delinquent on payments. People simply stopped paying the NHK by 2005 due to a series of scandals. This made the NHK opt to take legal action against those who most obviously did not want to pay the fees. This, combined with the high prices of anime DVDs in Japan, makes it hard for anyone to pay for any media in Japan. *Tetsunoshin, upon finding out that the Inuyamas loaned so much money that their company was almost bankrupt (complete with a Joseph Joestar reference, to boot), tries to help pay their expenses. *"Let's talk about your expenses. Why in space are they so high? Particularly these food costs seem way overbudget." **And he's talking to the same Angel Brigade who wastes millions of GCs wrecking things and ruining stuff, eating whatever they think is yummy (hence the quote above), and using lost technology so often that it almost threatens the universe. The few times they actually get any GCs, it's usually blown on frivolous things or revealed to be fake or stolen the entire time. *Goku actually ran up a big bill that took most of Jackie Chun's (read: Roshi's) prize money, leaving him with only 30,000 zenny. *Tobuscus' "Diamond Sword" video actually subverts this; quote the lyrics, "And it was expensive, but it was a write-off!" Credit card/Debt variants *Caitlin from 6teen maxed out her credit card in the first episode, causing her father to force her to get a job. *South Park: Kyle Broflovski, though he uses it to pay off South Park's debts, and not for his personal gain. Still, Sheila had a point when she said that Kyle could be in debt for the rest of his life. Bankruptcy variant Real-life examples *The Panic of 1873 set off a wave of bank failures and Railroads Gone Bankrupt. *The Panic of 1893, just 20 years later, was a more extreme version of the 1873 panic. *The most well-known example happens to lie within The Great Depression. Ridiculously High Unemployment, Railroads Gone Bankrupt, Abandoned Schools, bread lines, the Dust Bowl... all those were part of it. *Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and, in turn, obscure, during the 2008 recession. *Chapter 11 bankruptcy (reorganization), Chapter 13 (also reorganization), and Chapter 7 (liquidation). *There's a reason why one of its former storefronts is the page image for From Rags to Bankruptcy- Toys "R" Us' bankruptcy was one of the largest bankruptcies in the world (and the largest bankruptcy of a toy store to date)- while it did continue Canadian operations, the bankruptcy led to big-box toy stores becoming extinct in Australia and Smyths to become the largest UK toy store chain. It took over a year for US operations to resume under new ownership, which didn't go well with former employees. *Enron's bankruptcy, however, was at the time the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. It was since surpassed by Lehman Brothers, documented above. *RKO General's dishonesty led to them liquidating. Since their main business at the time was broadcasting, once the FCC banned them from doing that in 1987, they were effectively banned from doing business at all. The only solution they had was selling off everything, which they did by 1991. Fictional examples *In Five Nights at Freddy's: Pizzeria Simulator, going into the negative by trying to fight lawsuits gives you a "Certificate of Bankruptcy". *The Simpsons: Homer once tried to push this trope on Ned Flanders and his family from "When Flanders Failed". Parodies *CollegeHumor made a video where the Monopoly man went bankrupt. And was sent to jail later on. *South Park had the people of South Park fight against this variant (and the regular variant too). **...and it's gone. TBA.